The immediate origins of the 1914 war lie in the twisted politics of the Kingdom of Serbia.[1] In June, 1903, Serbian army officers murdered their king and queen in the palace and threw their bodies out a window, at the same time massacring various royal relations, cabinet ministers, and members of the palace guards. It was an act that horrified and disgusted many in the civilized world. The military clique replaced the pro-Austrian Obrenoviƒá dynasty with the anti-Austrian Karageorgevices. The new government pursued a pro-Russian, Pan-Slavist policy, and a network of secret societies sprang up, closely linked to the government, whose goal was the “liberation” of the Serb subjects of Austria (and Turkey), and perhaps the other South Slavs as well.

The man who became prime minister, Nicolas Pašiƒá, aimed at the creation of a Greater Serbia, necessarily at the expense of Austria-Hungary. The Austrians felt, correctly, that the cession of their Serb-inhabited lands, and maybe even the lands inhabited by the other South Slavs, would set off the unraveling of the great multinational Empire. For Austria-Hungary, Serbian designs posed a mortal danger.

The Russian ambassador Hartwig worked closely with Pašiƒá and cultivated connections with some of the secret societies. The upshot of the two Balkan Wars which he promoted was that Serbia more than doubled in size and threatened Austria-Hungary not only politically but militarily as well. Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, wrote to Hartwig, “Serbia has only gone through the first stage of her historic road and for the attainment of her goal must still endure a terrible struggle in which her whole existence may be at stake.” Sazonov went on, as indicated above, to direct Serbian expansion to the lands of Austria-Hungary, for which Serbia would have to wage “the future inevitable struggle.”[2]

The nationalist societies stepped up their activities, not only within Serbia, but also in the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina. The most radical of these groups was Union or Death, popularly known as the Black Hand. It was led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrieviƒá, called Apis, who also happened to be the head of Royal Serbian Military Intelligence. Apis was a veteran of the slaughter of his own king and queen in 1903, as well as of a number of other political murder plots. “He was quite possibly the foremost European expert in regicide of his time.”[3] One of his close contacts was Colonel Artamonov, the Russian military attaché in Belgrade.

The venerable emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, Franz Josef, who had come to the throne in 1848, clearly had not much longer to live. His nephew and heir, Franz Ferdinand, was profoundly concerned by the wrenching ethnic problems of the Empire and sought their solution in some great structural reform, either in the direction of federalism for the various national groups, or else “trialism,” the creation of a third, Slavic component of the Empire, alongside the Germans and the Magyars. Since such a concession would mean the ruin of any program for a Greater Serbia, Franz Ferdinand was a natural target for assassination by the Black Hand.[4]

In the spring of 1914, Serbian nationals who were agents of the Black Hand recruited a team of young Bosnian fanatics for the job. The youths were trained in Belgrade and provided with guns, bombs, guides (also Serbian nationals) to help them cross the border, and cyanide for after their mission was accomplished. Prime Minister Pašiƒá learned of the plot, informed his cabinet, and made ineffectual attempts to halt it, including conveying a veiled, virtually meaningless warning to an Austrian official in Vienna. (It is also likely that the Russian attaché Artamonov knew of the plot.[5]) No clear message of the sort that might have prevented the assassination was forwarded to the Austrians. On June 28, 1914, the plot proved a brilliant success, as 19 year old Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in the streets of Sarajevo.

In Serbia, Princip was instantly hailed as a hero, as he was also in post-World War I Yugoslavia, where the anniversary of the murders was celebrated as a national and religious holiday. A marble tablet was dedicated at the house in front of which the killings took place. It was inscribed: “On this historic spot, on 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip proclaimed freedom.”[6] In his history of the First World War, Winston Churchill wrote of Princip that “he died in prison, and a monument erected in recent years by his fellow-countrymen records his infamy, and their own.”[7]

In Vienna, in that summer of 1914, the prevalent mood was much less Belgrade’s celebration of the deed than Churchill’s angry contempt. This atrocity was the sixth in less than four years and strong evidence of the worsening Serbian danger, leading the Austrians to conclude that the continued existence of an expansionist Serbia posed an unacceptable threat to the Habsburg monarchy. An ultimatum would be drawn up containing demands that Serbia would be compelled to reject, giving Austria an excuse to attack. In the end, Serbia would be destroyed, probably divided up among its neighbors (Austria, which did not care to have more disaffected South Slavs as subjects, would most likely abstain from the partition). Obviously, Russia might choose to intervene. However, this was a risk the Austrians were prepared to take, especially after they received a “blank check” from Kaiser Wilhelm to proceed with whatever measures they thought necessary. In the past, German support of Austria had forced the Russians to back down.

Scholars have now available to them the diary of Kurt Riezler, private secretary to the German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. From this and other documents it becomes clear that Bethmann Hollweg’s position in the July crisis was a complex one. If Austria were to vanish as a power, Germany would be threatened by rampant Pan-Slavism supported by growing Russian power in the east and by French revanchism in the west. By prompting the Austrians to attack Serbia immediately, he hoped that the conflict would be localized and the Serbian menace nullified. The Chancellor, too, understood that the Central Powers were risking a continental war. But he believed that if Austria acted swiftly presenting Europe with “a rapid fait accompli,” the war could be confined to the Balkans, and “the intervention of third parties [avoided] as much as possible.” In this way, the German-Austrian alliance could emerge with a stunning political victory that might split the Entente and crack Germany’s “encirclement.”[8]

But the Austrians procrastinated, and the ultimatum was delivered to Serbia only on July 23. When Sazonov, in St. Petersburg, read it, he burst out: “C’est la guerre européenne!” — “It is the European war!” The Russians felt they could not leave Serbia once again in the lurch, after having failed to prevent the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina or to obtain a seaport for Serbia after the Second Balkan War. Sazonov told a cabinet meeting on July 24 that abandoning Serbia would mean betraying Russia’s “historic mission” as the protector of the South Slavs, and also reduce Russia to the rank of a second-rate power.[9]

On July 25, the Russian leaders decided to institute what was known in their plans as “The period preparatory to war,” the prelude to all-out mobilization. Directed against both of the Central Powers, this “set in train a whole succession of military measures along the Austrian and German frontiers.”[10] Back in the 1920s, Sidney Fay had already cited the testimony of a Serbian military officer, who, in traveling from Germany to Russia on July 28, found no military measures underway on the German side of the border, while in Russian Poland “mobilization steps [were] being taken on a grand scale.” “These secret ‘preparatory measures,'” commented Fay, “enabled Russia, when war came, to surprise the world by the rapidity with which she poured her troops into East Prussia and Galicia.”[11] In Paris, too, the military chiefs began taking preliminary steps to general mobilization as early as July 25.[12]

On July 28, Austria declared war on Serbia. The French ambassador in St. Petersburg, Maurice Paléologue, most likely with the support of Poincaré, urged the Russians on to intransigence and general mobilization. In any case, Poincaré had given the Russians their own “blank check” in 1912, when he assured them that “if Germany supported Austria [in the Balkans], France would march.”[13] Following the (rather ineffectual) Austrian bombardment of Belgrade, the Tsar was finally persuaded on July 30 to authorize general mobilization, to the delight of the Russian generals (the decree was momentarily reversed, but then confirmed, finally). Nicholas II had no doubt as to what that meant: “Think of what awful responsibility you are advising me to take! Think of the thousands and thousands of men who will be sent to their deaths!”[14] In a very few years the Tsar himself, his family, and his servants would be shot to death by the Bolsheviks.

What had gone wrong? James Joll wrote, “The Austrians had believed that vigorous action against Serbia and a promise of German support would deter Russia; the Russians had believed that a show of strength against Austria would both check the Austrians and deter Germany. In both cases, the bluff had been called.”[15] Russia — and, through its support of Russia, France — as well as Austria and Germany, was quite willing to risk war in July, 1914.

As the conflict appeared more and more inevitable, in all the capitals the generals clamored for their contingency plans to be put into play. The best-known was the Schlieffen Plan, drawn up some years before, which governed German strategy in case of a two-front war. It called for concentrating forces against France for a quick victory in the west, and then transporting the bulk of the army to the eastern front via the excellent German railway system, to meet and vanquish the slow-moving (it was assumed) Russians. Faced with Russian mobilization and the evident intention of attacking Austria, the Germans activated the Schlieffen Plan. It was, as Sazonov had cried out, the European War.[16]

On July 31, the French cabinet, acceding to the demand of the head of the army, General Joffre, authorized general mobilization. The next day, the German ambassador to St. Petersburg, Portalès, called on the Russian Foreign Minister. After asking him four times whether Russia would cancel mobilization and receiving each time a negative reply, Portalès presented Sazonov with Germany’s declaration of war. The German ultimatum to France was a formality. On August 3, Germany declared war on France as well.[17]

3 responses to “And the War Came”

I have always agreed with my Libertarian colleague Sean Gabb that WW1 – that initial part of the 1,000-years-war-of-Europe-against-England-that-fell-in-the-first-part-of-
the-20th-century – was the single greatest disaster ever to befall the English People. But I also side with George V, who suggested, it is said, to Rudyard Kipling after WW1, that “My dear fellow, I just cannot see what else we could have done, in the circumstances”.

The 1903 coup in Serbia was indeed squalid and terroristic – alas there was no Rudolf R. on hand to prevent it.

And (like Mises) I have a soft spot for the House of Hapsburg – and, therefore, a bias against its enemies.

However, unlike Mises. this article totally ignores the ideology that had become dominant in Germany by 1914.

Bismark may never have really believed in German nationalist ideology (any more than he really believed in antisemitism – an ideology he privately mocked, but used to deady effect in the 1870s) – but the nationalist/collectivist doctrine he pushed got out of control (the new Emperor was a believer – hence the downfall of Bismark after 1890).

As both Mises and Hayek make clear (in many works – starting with “Nation, State and Economy” published by Mises just after the First World War) collectivism was on the march in all countries – but in Germany most of all.

The German academics (and the elite they educated) really did believe in such things as German rule of Latin America (and so on).

So if Britain had not gone to war with Germany over Belguim – we would simply have had to go to war with Germany over something else.

As for what would have happened had there been no World War One (say aliens had teleported Germany to another planet), it is hard to know what would have happened – but key mistakes had already been made.

Education had been taken over by the state in Britain (such EnglishWelsh Acts as that of 1870 and 1891 – and the Scots Act of, I think, 1872). – in this Britain imitated Prussia (just as America and other places did).

Pro union laws had been established – in 1875 and 1906 (thus signing the long term death warrent for British industry).

Taxes were on the rise (having reached their low point in 1874) – and income tax was not just rising it was also (from the early 1890s) graduated as well.

And, finally, the first Welfare State moves had been made – with the rejection of the Majority Report on the Poor Law (a report written by people who actually knew what they were talking about) and the, de facto, acceptance of the Minority Report (written by a bunch of Fabian ……). Indeed by establishing a formal unemployment benefit – the British government had gone further than even Bismark had.

Firstly the driving away of Russia (which Bismark understood it was vital to keep as an ally of Germany) – with anti Slav fanatics just allowing the treaty with Russia to lapse (and treating the Russian elite with deliberate contempt – thus driving them into the hands of the French). Of course “Pan Slav” ideology was the mirror image (and just as insane) as “Pan German” ideology. They fed off each other – and tried to outdo each other (for example in antisemitism – where the Russian government actually made the running, with German “intellectualls” filled with envy and full of bitterness that they could not get their “noble” racist and eugenic ideals translated into actual legislation).

Then the domestic war economy.

There really is a difference between the economic policy of, for example, France and that of Germany during the First World War – especially after 1916 when German “War Socialism” took control.

And, as Mises pointed out, German (and Austrian) War Socialism was a failure – indeed a farcical failure.

Of course the lesson that the French, British and American elites got from this failture – was that War Socialism was wonderful (very “scientific”) and should be pushed in peacetime as well as war.